As online competition intensifies and consumer expectations continue to evolve, Unbounce’s latest innovation is a crucial part of the company’s aggressive ambitions: To help small and midsize businesses (SMBs) optimize their marketing with AI marketing insights traditionally designed for large corporations.
The platform pairs a marketer’s intelligence with machine learning to increase the conversion rates of marketing campaigns at every touchpoint. Composed of a suite of smart solutions, including Smart Builder, Smart Traffic, and the newly launched AI copywriting assistant, Smart Copy, the new platform provides the fastest way to increase visitor conversions using conversion intelligence—a disruptive new approach to marketing.
“Since opening our doors more than 10 years ago as an innovator in landing page software, Unbounce has existed to help small businesses grow smarter by making access to essential digital marketing tools easy,” said Tamara Grominsky, chief strategy officer of Unbounce. “However, today, we’re seeing small businesses falling behind while large enterprises with big budgets are dominating the competitive landscape.
“Conversion Intelligence allows marketers, with limited budgets and teams, to pair their own expertise with data-powered AI insights to create and optimize the highest-converting campaigns possible. It’s simple: Marketers who aren’t embracing this new approach are going to be left behind.”
Conversion Intelligence: The New Era of Marketing
By leveraging Unbounce’s Conversion Intelligence Platform, small business marketers canpair their creative know-how with machine learning to effortlessly create relevance, improve conversion rates, and understand where to best spend their time for optimal impact. A game-changer for solopreneurs and marketers alike, the platform provides the fastest way to increase visitor conversions through the following conversion intelligence solutions:
Smart Copy: A new AI copywriting solution released today, Smart Copy uses GPT-3 to generate human-like copy within seconds and in six different languages for ads, emails, landing pages, blog posts, TikTok videos, pitches, and 40 more copy creation needs.
Smart Builder: An AI-powered landing page builder that allows marketers to create on-brand pages designed to convert and based on a marketer’s specific industry and campaign goals.
Smart Traffic: A self-driving optimization tool for SMBs that connects your visitors with their best-fit landing pages to increase conversions by an average of 30%, while identifying conversion patterns in as few as 50 visits for landing pages. In comparison to traditional A/B testing, Smart Traffic saves marketers precious ad spend, time and effort, and eliminates the need for one champion page.
“The Unbounce Smart Copy solution inspires me. It’s like brainstorming with a room full of people, but it’s just me and my AI copywriting ‘assistant,'” said Sebastiaan Hooft, founder of Redesign Records. “Without Smart Copy, I would be spending an extra four hours a day crafting copy—precious time that I’d rather spend on building my brand and business. Now, I can say so-long to writers’ block and be confident in the quality and performance of my content.”
A Solution for Time-Strapped, Budget-Constrained SMBs
Today’s small business owners face limited time, ad budgets, and marketing expertise to reach audiences in the hyper-accelerated digital landscape; research demonstrates that 47% of small business owners run marketing entirely on their own and inevitably end up wearing too many hats.
With Unbounce as a core part of their marketing team, small businesses have been able to increase success without a new budget, improve conversion rates across all segments, and increase the confidence needed to grow their business while reducing the need for a designer, copywriter, or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) expert.
“For many SMB marketers, taking on marketing efforts while trying to grow the business on limited budgets is a daunting and seemingly impossible task,” said Jonathan Naccache, founder of Webistry. “The changing digital landscape means that one-size-fits-all and traditional marketing no longer yield results and small businesses like myself need to create meaningful marketing experiences that drive conversions to survive.
“With Unbounce, we‘ve been able to grow our customers, better understand and reach their target audience, and keep pace with the changing digital landscape.”
It’s the middle of the night and all of a sudden: drip, drip, drip…
You wipe your face and peer through the darkness at the ceiling. Uh-oh, something’s leaking up there. Like most people, you reach for your smartphone and search for a plumber that would be available to help at this ungodly hour.
Scroll, tap, and voilà: There’s a landing page for 24/7 plumbing in your area with a CTA to dial the number right away.
In the olden days, you’d likely look up the number in the phone book (a phone what?). Now, people turn to their mobile devices as soon as they have a problem that needs solving or a question that needs answering.
We all know there’s nothing more reassuring than hearing a human voice at the other end of the line. And that’s why optimizing your landing pages for pay-per-call advertising campaigns is crucial in this digital landscape.
Why Pay-Per-Call Ad Campaigns Are Critical in the Mobile Age
Pay-per-call ad campaigns are the holy grail of mobile online marketing. They’re what every marketer dreams about and strives for.
With a phone call, leads don’t need to hide behind technology: no intrusive qualifying questions to reply to, no multiple-choice buttons, no pull-down menus, no CAPTCHA riddles.
Phone leads are more engaged and less guarded.
Why Are Landing Pages Important for Pay-Per-Call Campaigns
A landing page is the first thing your potential customer will see after they click on your pay-per-call ad. To be effective, your page needs to become an extension of your ad by:
Showing clear benefits that answer your prospect’s search query: If the search term is “weekend plumbers near me” your benefits must reflect your ability to be on site in 30 minutes or less, your lack of a weekend surcharge, the fact that you run a 24/7 operation including holidays, and so on.
Reflecting the needs of your prospect through putting yourself in their shoes: “We know how frustrating it is when your plumbing fails in the most inopportune time, the inconvenience of a pipe leak, or a clogged kitchen sink when all hardware stores are closed.”
Presenting a clear call to action: This is where you reach out offering your help, where you say, “Our reps are always on standby, just a phone call away to get all your problems solved.”
What Should You Include in Your Pay-Per-Call Landing Page Design?
When it comes to pay-per-call landing page design, you need to use a less is more approach. Your job is to persuade your prospect to call you without making them fall into a rabbit hole of unnecessary information.
Don’t sell your business by showing endless feature lists and a company backgrounder. Instead, build a bridge of trust by reflecting their needs and presenting your solution in a way that makes them feel you’re the white knight that’ll come to their rescue.
To this effect, your pay-per-call landing page design needs to include:
A headline and sub-headline that reflects your prospect’s main pain point and your solution. Make this text, font, and color clearly contrast with your page’s background palette.
A call to action button that jumps out of the page so there’s never any doubt in the mind of your prospect that a single tap will immediately put them in touch with you.
An offer that creates peace of mind. In other words, an offer that’ll relieve their pain, not showcase your bells and whistles (so, stay away from expressions that have nothing to do with your prospect, like “30 years in business,” “No job is too small,” etc.).
Last but not least, your business logo.
Examples of Pay-Per-Call Landing Pages
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so let’s look at a few pay-per-call landing page examples and discuss their key elements.
1. Health and wellness
As you can see, the choice of a forest hero shot evokes a sense of grounding and peace, which is what someone in need of the services of a drug rehab center is looking for.
The messaging encourages without being forceful, emphasizing confidentiality coupled with free advice.
Most importantly, the call to action is clear and tells you exactly what to do when you call (“Press 2”), yet it uses a subdued tone that complements the color palette of the background.
2. Home services
Here’s a landing page in response to a search for an “affordable weekend plumber.” Cost is key in the messaging to counter the expectation that a weekend plumbing call is going to be a lot more expensive than a regular business hours call.
This landing page’s job is to convey the message that even though they operate 24/7/365, they’re still affordable. To make this even clearer, the call to action button stresses that there will be no charge to get an estimate for the work.
Finally, the hero shot shows an expert’s hand and tools to instill trust and peace of mind—meaning that no matter how dire the plumbing emergency might be, the prospect shouldn’t worry (because things will get better soon).
3. Legal
This is a landing page for a legal firm specializing in food poisoning personal injury claims. The focus here is to get top compensation for their clients, a key expectation for these types of calls.
They clearly point out the fact that clients are not expected to have any out-of-pocket expenses whatsoever and that all services will be offered on a contingency basis.
They also stress their 24/7 availability, because food poisoning cases often occur after hours and they want to make sure their prospects know they’ll be available when the incident happens, so they can advise them what to do while the iron is hot.
The call to action is clean and the message makes it clear how to navigate the firm’s phone answering choices since personal injury law firms handle many different types of cases.
Finally, the hero shot reflects the predicament of the victim, signaling empathy towards their situation.
Want to Optimize Your Pay-Per-Call Landing Pages? We’re Here to Help
When it comes to optimizing your landing pages to maximize pay-per-call conversions, you always need to make sure that the job of your page is not to “sell” your services, but to become the natural solution to your prospect’s pain points.
All your design choices, from the color palette to call-to-action buttons to hero images, must be chosen to reflect the needs and hopes of your prospect.
The same goes for your messaging: Empathy drives conversions. The more your prospect identifies with your messaging and feels that you truly understand them, the more they’ll feel comfortable taking action and making that call.
Try Smart Builder to create and optimize variants of your landing pages, and watch your pay-per-call conversions get the boost they deserve.
As you may have heard, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a competitive game.
PPC is a method of digital advertising in which you aim to get your ads to rank as the highest result displayed for user searches, and you, as the advertiser, pay a fee each time it’s clicked. This means that when a user types in words related to your business, your customized ad will be the first result they see—sometimes.
Thousands of businesses are willing to spend unbelievable amounts of money to rank at the top of search engine results pages (SERP) and in the most relevant places for their users around the web.
In 2019, small businesses spent between $9,000 and $10,000 per month on PPC, with Google making an average of $116.5 billion in revenue from Google Ads alone the year before.
So, yeah—businesses bid high numbers to play. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play too.
The key to maximizing your return on ad spend (ROAS) is to be highly strategic in your audience targeting, keyword usage, and landing page design.
We’re here to show you how to get the best bang for your buck by cleaning up your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) strategy.
(Pssssst … Do you have a specific PPC-related question? Hop straight to it here :)
Think of your paid ad as an internet detective. Each platform varies in how you can create your ad sets, but one thing remains the same:
Your ad (internet detective) finds the most relevant spots to be seen by your ideal customers and fights for optimal placements.
There are two ad formats to choose from once you and your team set your campaign goals: display and search.
Display
Display ads rely on graphic formats to catch user attention, build brand awareness, and guide users to your site. They’re shown based on specific audience targeting criteria such as demographics, interests, or retargeting events and show up in images and video.
You typically see them displayed on the newsfeed of your social media platforms. Although, your display ad isn’t just confined to social media. It can also appear on websites that have similar content and keywords to your business. That way, even when your prospects are considering alternatives—you can still be top of mind.
Search ads are a wordsmith’s dream. These ad formats rely on short, impactful copy that sends the right message and captures user intent. This is where knowing your audience well will pay off—literally. These ads appear at the top of the SERP.
Aside from the above or below search results on Google search, through the Google Search Network, your ads can appear beside, above, or below search results on Google Play, the Shopping tab, Google Images, Google Maps, and the Maps app.
If your budget doesn’t allow for a high bid (or you don’t feel it’s the best use of your budget), then you’ll need to be extra clear on the keywords you use.
Coupling keywords with your offer determines what your winning combination will be. You need to secure space in your market with a relevant keyword while also finding a way to stand out. It might take a couple of tweaks to get the formula right, so make sure you keep track of your ad performance. This way, you can jump into your campaign to move things around while making the necessary changes to your post-click landing page.
Tip: Take a look at your competitors’ performance by typing in a keyword you might share. Take note of where their ads and other pages land on the first search results page and use that insight to determine how you can differentiate your copy/offering.
Give it time, and you’re sure to strike gold as you refine your ad set.
Retargeting
You can use retargeting ads in both display and search formats on the same platforms you launch your PPC campaigns from (i.e, Google, Facebook, Youtube, Bing, LinkedIn). Retargeting leverages past engagements with your brand to show consumers ads to re-engage them.
For example, when you’re shopping online and leave a website before purchasing the items in your cart, the brand receives an “abandoned cart” notice. If they have retargeting ads in place, you’ll notice reminders to revisit their website through:
Email messages Social media display ads Website banners (even if the website you’re browsing has nothing to do with that brand specifically)
Retargeting ads allow you to finish the job and turn prospects into leads.
You have lots of flexibility when it comes to paid advertising. However, knowing what role you want it to play in your marketing strategy can be the difference between dollars gained and dollars wasted.
2. The Role of PPC in Marketing Strategies
PPC advertising is an efficient way to find ideal customers that would otherwise be difficult to find. After all, you can’t be in all places at once.
But when your PPC ad finds the right audience, you need to make sure that you’ve created it to address the right intent.
As the name implies, purchase intent is when a consumer shows signs of being ready to buy a product or service.
A general ad about your business is unlikely to get the conversions you’re hoping for. PPC provides an opportunity to create a sense of urgency by addressing the specific problem your ideal customer is seeking to solve.
To create an effective PPC campaign, you need to decide what your ultimate goal is.
Is it brand awareness? If you’ve just launched a business, a new product, or you’re trying to attract new customers, your goal should likely be brand awareness.
Brand awareness can be like a social currency for startups.
Sales will always be a top priority. However, before you can start to grow your revenue, you need to build credibility in your industry, build trust with your ideal customers, and slice out a part of the market.
Think about what messaging resonates with your audience most. Your goal here is to have your ad illustrate your style and expertise in a compact package.
If you need to prove product-market fit, generate more sales, or justify upgrades for a product, this is the goal you want to focus on.
You’ll need to customize your copy and targeting strategy to ensure you’re communicating the transformation your offer provides while also never losing sight of your customer.
In a brand awareness campaign, you may not have been using retargeting ads. But when you’re focused on maximizing each site visit to its fullest potential (i.e., a purchase)—you’ll wanna make sure that potential customers don’t slip through the cracks.
Base your targeting on your buyer personas. Confirm what you know and don’t know about their purchase habits. Then, use those insights to craft a customer journey map that enables you to send them the ads relevant to their journey at the right time.
3. Why Your PPC Ad Needs a Dedicated Landing Page
Look, you can create the most quintessential display ad, craft the most impeccable search ad, and kick your feet up expecting the traffic to roll in like a runaway train—but you’ll only see tumbleweeds if you don’t optimize the post-click.
Post-click marketing is the practice of engaging with potential customers after they click on your business’s PPC ad. Think of it as your typical marketing funnel. The first click achieves awareness and proves user interest. The next stage is where decisions get made.
Users can either leave your site entirely or travel further down the funnel, depending on how your post-click marketing impacts their consideration of your product. This is your opportunity to personalize the redirect path as much as possible.
It’s a beautiful homepage, but as a user—you’re lost.
You clicked that ad for one thing only: home extensions. But that homepage requires you to navigate the site to find what you’re looking for. While it wouldn’t be that hard to find, it’s more clicks and content for your brain to consider while browsing.
When optimizing your post-click strategy, your goal is to limit distractions and bring the user to the exact destination implied by your ad. This is called message matching and, for PPC marketers, conversions are made and lost on the accuracy of this strategy.
That’s why Facet’s ad brings users to the page below instead of their home page.
Personalized, targeted, and relevant landing pages play a huge part in determining whether your PPC ads convert as intended.
With each campaign you create, you should also consider how to customize the landing page it leads to. Your PPC ad and landing page need to work together like Batman and Robin to achieve your goals.
But there are a host of variables you need to consider to make that happen.
4. A Step-By-Step Guide to Optimizing Your Post-Click Strategy
Copy
Instead of starting from a blank slate when creating copy for a new ad, why not remix the content from your landing page?
It’s a tall order to jam all the relevant information from your landing page into a headline and a 90-character description that’ll get users past the first click.
But when you prioritize message match and focus on being clear rather than clever, you’ll find that your headline almost writes itself!
If it doesn’t, here are a few headline formulas you can rely on to help you frame your offer:
The how-to headline: Highlight your expertise by linking it to a common goal your target audience is trying to achieve. You’ll need to make it specific and show some social proof to back up your claim for this one to work.
The agitator: The goal here is to highlight a pain point for your target audience and provide an alternative solution that they’re unlikely to have considered (i.e., your differentiator). You’ll want to use this strategy as a play on your key search term.
In the example below, Noom leverages the high-yielding keyword “diet” to capture the attention of its target audience and present a bold alternative. In this case, their differentiator is using behavioral science to help people take control of their health.
The listings lab: Show your target audience you know exactly who they are by both highlighting a pain point and naming their demographic. Example: “Stuck at Six Figures in Your Real Estate Business?” The headline speaks directly to the ideal customer. In this case: real estate professionals looking to grow their business.
Remember that, whichever headline you choose, you want to make sure that it mirrors what the user will find on the landing page that comes post-click.
Marketers need to master a suite of different skills to be effective, but they all boil down to understanding how to manage user expectations.
It doesn’t mean that your PPC ad needs to be a carbon copy of the copy on your landing page (though, when in doubt, that wouldn’t be theworstoption). You can diversify your copy while still keeping it clear, creative, and connected.
You can use a hierarchy system to leverage the use of your keywords. For example, if you’re advertising a “contactless payment system,” you can leverage keywords associated with that same theme, such as:
Accept online payments
Online payments
Payment processing
Remote payments
Pre-built payment options
Take card payments
Secure payment solutions
By adding terms like “best” or “buy,” your keywords are now directly tied to active buyers in comparing and contrasting solutions in the purchase stage of their search. Just a tip here: 65% of traffic to this type of keyword comes from paid clicks compared to 35% of organic results.
If you don’t feel 100% confident with your first draft of ad copy, don’t hesitate to experiment with different combinations—as long as your copy mirrors what’s on your post-click landing page.
Finding the right keywords to string together will require a bit of tweaking before you discover the right fit for your audience.
You’ll know you’ve found the right fit for your PPC ad when the copy includes three components vital to your campaign’s success:
A compelling tagline: We already touched on headlines, which hold the highest importance for your ad, but your headline and tagline shouldn’t always be the same. Your tagline is a short, memorable phrase that demonstrates the vision behind your offer.
With your headline, it’s better to be clear instead of cute. With your tagline, it’s better to be distinctive than it is to be dry.
Crafting a compelling tagline leverages memory recall, which can be to your advantage since you want to stay top of mind when it’s time for your ideal customer to make a purchase.
Here are a few common taglines that the world has adopted over time:
Nike: Just Do It Apple: Think Different. Subway: Eat Fresh.
A clear and strong CTA: Your main goal with your landing page is to get your users to take a specific action. Sometimes, marketers fall into the trap of “selling mode” and neglect the need for a refined call to action focused on the product or service’s value to the end user.
Think of the CTAs you commonly see across different websites and platforms:
“Get started.”
“Sign up now.”
“Subscribe now.”
Yes, technically, they’re telling the user to take a specific action. But that’s just it—they’re telling as opposed to guiding.
Those CTAs don’t communicate value from a user perspective. By changing your language, your CTAs can become more targeted and personalized, converting 42% more visitors into leads than non-targeted CTAs like the ones above.
Here’s how you give those CTAs a personal touch. Notice the word “your” in each line:
“Take charge of your finances.”
“Grow your following.”
“Launch your site.”
Urgency: Listen, there are billions of search entries per day, which means that you need to compete for your audience’s attention.
After you’ve crafted your headline and tagline, it’s time to bring it home with a sense of urgency that signals the value of your commodity.
Set a deadline, offer a bonus incentive, use phrases like “last chance,” “before it’s gone,” and “one time only.”
Tip: Writing conversion-focused copy can take more time than you think. You need to research your customers and their past purchase behaviors, test different copy combinations, and create high-quality content quickly to remain competitive.
That’s why we’ve acquired Snazzy AI, an AI content generator that takes the pain out of copywriting to help you create those optimized marketing campaigns way faster. AI-powered copywriting gives you better results with less work. See how you can start optimizing your landing page copy with Snazzy—for free.
Imagery
Your post-click landing page is the user’s first impression of your brand—so you have to be looking your best.
There are endless theories out there regarding what colors and images you should use on your landing page to bring you closer to converting visitors. Before relying on those “best practices” to provide the results you’re looking for, you should always, always, always let your copy inform your use of imagery.
One way to get started is to make sure the header on your post-click landing page matches the keywords and/or CTAs used in your PPC ad.
Let’s use the Deel payroll search ad as an example.
The landing page doesn’t imply Deel will do the payroll for you (as they state in their headline). However, the keywords “world,” “work,” and “international” all work in tandem with the image of the young employee dressed in casual clothing, wearing a backpack, and smiling.
Even without reading the descriptive text, you can tell that you’ve landed in alignment with where you expected the ad to take you.
(Excitement and interest sustained .)
As a B2B company, Deel is less likely to be targeting the persona shown in this image. However, research has shown that visitors respond best to landing pages with realistic, human imagery instead of stock images.
Instead of using the header of this post-click landing page to feature a picture of a hiring manager, Deel creatively uses the image of a satisfied employee (the woman looks ecstatic) able to work remotely from anywhere in the world.
So, here are some questions to consider when choosing imagery based on the keywords used in your PPC copy:
What does your headline say?
What is it communicating (ease, quality, simplicity, speed)?
Who’s your target persona for this ad?
How can they be reflected in your header image?
What emotions from your ad copy will you mirror in the imagery you choose?
Also, keep in mind that social proof and testimonials can be your best friend.
Word of mouth recommendations from industry friends carries a lot of weight in the B2B world. About 97% of B2B customers stated that testimonials and peer recommendations are the type of content they rely on most.
Business is changing these days, and people are much more skilled at judging the authenticity of a brand from their landing page imagery, clientele, and presence online.
You can also optimize your landing page to feature images of the product your customers enjoyed the most or had questions about.
Segmentation
Creating personalized experiences for different segments of your audience is no easy feat.
You’ll need to know more about your audience segments than just their age, where they live, and how much money they make.
Your PPC ad will perform better when you use segmentation to target different keyword variations, locations, personas, and events.
Making audience research a continuous process will help inform the details you’ll need for your PPC ads.
If you’re:
Conducting customer interviews or distributing micro surveys.
Monitoring social media platforms.
Comparing competitive data.
Monitoring site performance.
Then you have all the data you need to personalize your PPC ads.
On top of targeting demographic data like age, location, and gender, it also helps to consider the psychographic data of each of your audience segments. Understanding the habits of your ideal customers allows you to take advantage of time targeting.
Let’s not beat around the bush: PPC campaigns can get expensive quickly.
By monitoring the conversion and performance data day by day and comparing it to previous weeks, you’ll be able to spot times of peak engagement that occur on specific days within a defined time frame. It’s a technique called dayparting.
You can use the technique to optimize your PPC campaigns and control your ad spend by serving ads at those specific peak times.
Psychographic data can help you with your ad scheduling and assist you in creating variant post-click landing pages that convert visitors.
You want to be that overeager friend in the group that asks all the questions:
→ What are their working hours?
→ When do they like to shop online?
→ What devices do they use to shop online?
→ What payment options do they prefer for online purchases?
→ What are their hobbies?
This way, you can segment your PPC targeting by topics, interests, and life events.
With Google’s broad match keyword targeting, the keywords in your PPC campaign can show up beside related topics that don’t contain your keyword.
For example, if your keyword were “low-carb diet plan,” it would show up as a result in the associated searches below:
Broad match keyword targeting can help you find audiences you may not have considered and give you insight into how you can optimize your search terms if you’d like to make them more refined.
But that ad spend will pile up quickly if you have a broad target with no way of narrowing down your audience.
The key to saving your ad spend is to use negative keywords in conjunction with your primary keyword terms and phrases. You can continue with your long-tail keyword “low-carb diet plan” while excluding the common search term “diet” so you won’t serve your ad to general audiences.
Once you find the proper targeting parameters for your various audience segments, you need to make sure that to maintain your personalized message on your post-click landing page.
You can create various post-click landing pages by simply adding a few thoughtful edits to your original creation.
Let’s continue with the low-carb diet plan idea:
If one audience segment is women, 25-30, living in Los Angeles, searching for low-carb diet plans, tired of going to the gym, and making $70K annually, modify the imagery and CTAs on your post-click landing page to appeal to that persona.
If another audience segment is men, 35-40, living in Manhattan, searching for low-carb diet plans, tired of eating fast food, with no time for the gym, and making $50K annually, modify the imagery and CTAs on your post-click landing page to appeal to that persona.
Creating variants may take more time, but your audience will be far more likely to respond to an offer that shows an intimate understanding of their situation.
If you need help expediting this process, check out Unbounce’s Smart Traffic tool.
Page structure, design & hierarchy
Once a user lands on your post-click landing page, the heat is on.
This is the consideration stage at which that visitor either becomes a customer or chooses to leave your site.
Tip: Keep in mind that site bounces aren’t always a bad thing. Of course, we always want visitors to convert, but that’s not realistic for most first-time visitors. Learn how to leverage remarketing here, so you never lose touch with a potential customer.
You have two main goals with your post-click landing page:
1. Ensure that PPC ad messaging is maintained
2. Reduce friction along the path to purchase
Advertisements above the fold have about 73% more viewability than CTAs below the fold. If your site visitor needs more convincing, then they’ll scroll down for supporting info. But make sure your main message is prominent on your page.
It also helps to have data on the device your target audience uses most frequently to browse online. For example, heat mapping shows how users navigate your page, including where they click and how far they scroll.
You can leverage this data to make changes to where you place information and structure your page with a user interface (UI) design delivering a great customer experience for both mobile and desktop devices.
In July 2021, a study found that 49.71 percent of total web visits come via mobile, compared to 50.29 percent from desktops. Even if the ratio favors desktop over mobile, optimizing the mobile user experience (UX) is still good practice.
There’s one way you can ensure your design transfers well between devices: visual hierarchy.
If you follow the law of visual hierarchy, you increase your chances of getting your visitor to convert. Users will spend an average of 6 seconds above the fold on your post-click landing page. You’ll want to make sure you’re as clear as possible, that you sustain the excitement from the PPC ad, and that there are no interruptions.
Even if your newsletter has thousands of subscribers and you feel that any interested page visitor could benefit from it, now is not the time.
Remember: Reduce friction along the path to purchase.
This brings us to the length of the forms you might be hosting on your post-click landing page.
First, you’ll need to confirm what type of information is critical for this step of the signup process and whether you need new leads or higher-quality leads.
If you need new leads, short and straightforward forms make the best first impression. You just need to make sure you have enough information to contact these new leads.
Ask for their:
First name
Last name
Email
If you deem it necessary, you can also ask for their job function and the company they work for. But for locking in new leads, this form shouldn’t exceed five questions.
In the B2B world, you’ll often need to sift through hundreds of forms to segment higher-quality leads. You’ll want to make sure the people filling your forms can pay for your offer and are confident in your solution.
For longer forms, it’s common to ask questions like:
First name
Last name
Email
Job function
Company
Industry
CRM system(or alternative tech inquiries)
Again, knowing your audience segments will help you create the right forms for the right clientele.
Tip: B2B doesn’t have to be boring. The colors, images, and graphics on your forms have a big influence on that last click. We’re not saying, “Grab a CSS expert and go wild!”
Use the styling of your landing page forms to stay aligned with the personality of your audience segments. Oh, and don’t be afraid of white space. Having a bit of white space around your forms increases its readability.
Using a tool like Hotjar across different pages you’ve published can help you understand how your audience navigates content. This practice of heat mapping shows you how visitors interact with individual website pages, where they get stuck, and what elements they spend the most time on to optimize your landing pages based on real-time interaction data.
That’s one step closer to working smarter instead of harder if you ask us.
Streamlining your strategy
Once you make sure your landing page and PPC ad copy are in complete alignment, it’s time to set some goals and get into campaign mode.
Throughout this guide, we’ve been talking as if you’re selling a product or service. In truth, we don’t know what your goal is.
That’s because whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation, or sales, the same principle still applies: Optimize the post-click experiencethrough message matching.
Copy, segmentation, and page design are the tools you’ll need to make that happen. And once it does, there are a few metrics that will matter more than others. These include:
Landing page views: Page views are the first indication your PPC ad struck a chord with someone (hooray!). The number of page views your PPC ad generates shows you two things: Whether your ad copy reaches your audience (or not) and attracts the right audience (or not).
Sessions by Source: When you’re able to see where traffic to your post-click landing page is coming from, it saves you from guessing how to optimize your campaigns. Whether people are reaching your post-click landing page from a blog post, a referral website, a display ad, or a search ad, these insights reveal where your target audience spends their time online and your best way of reaching them. Once that’s discovered, you can refine your targeting to base your ad spend on demographics, timing, and trigger events that have already shown positive results.
Bounce rate: As we mentioned above, as much as we dislike it, bounce happens. Bounce rates represent the percentage of visitors that come to your page and leave without viewing other pages or converting. Your bounce rate doesn’t mean you failed. It’s an opportunity to figure out what isn’t resonating with visitors.
Goal completions: Here’s a metric that shows you when you’re winning! Whether it’s a purchase, a subscription, or a resource download, conversions are what make your efforts worthwhile. Just make sure that you’re tracking the goal completions that justify your investment in the PPC campaign compared to company revenue.
Cost per acquisition (CPA): This is the metric that shows how much money you’re spending. CPA is the average amount you pay for a customer to take action like:
Clicking
Filling out a form
Downloading a resource
Purchasing a product
Signing up for a newsletter
Here’s a simple formula to calculate CPA: ad spend ÷ number of actions taken.
You don’t want to wait for this number to get high and out of control before optimizing your campaign, so improving your CPA and making the most of your marketing budget is essential.
Put It All Together and What Do You Get?
A dedicated landing page for your PPC ads (rather than just a generic homepage) enables you to streamline content and reduce friction along the path to purchase.
Cha-ching.
With this guide, you can rest assured that, regardless of the format you choose for your PPC campaign, your post-click landing pages will be ready to go.
Remember why your PPC ads need a dedicated landing page:
1. To align to the user.
2. To increase personalization for your audience segments.
3. To increase conversions, of course!
To achieve those goals, you’ll need to focus on a combination of copy, imagery, page design/structure, and audience targeting. It may sound like a lot, but it’s all about connecting the dots. Make sure you keep your messaging consistent, and you’ll be well on your way to optimizing a post-click landing page that delivers better results in your PPC campaign.
If you need help testing out variants of your landing page, try Smart Traffic and let machine learning speed up your results to get the best conversion rates possible.
An AI copywriting tool able to generate content at the push of a button? Copywriters the world over shudder at the mere thought of it. A machine that writes emails, headings, landing pages, and more?! Madness!
But as this copywriter—who’s very much human—will tell you, there’s nothing to fear.
Imagine a world where you don’t have to agonize over every word, but rather plug your requirements into a machine—and presto!—the work has been done. It means you can spend your time editing, refining, and optimizing copy for various personas and channels, not brooding over draft 4.5 trying to make it all make sense.
With AI, meet your new copywriting assistant that takes care of tedious writing tasks so that you can focus on what really matters: getting campaigns to convert.
Typing like you’re a minute away from a deadline every day? Yeah, an AI copywriter can help with that.
So, how can you use AI copywriting tools in your marketing efforts? Let’s start with everything you need to know and explore how you can incorporate AI into your marketing stack—without alienating your human creators:
(You can also fast-track straight to your burning questions here:)
AI copywriting is content generated by machine-learning software. It does this by training an algorithm to crunch millions of web pages looking for patterns. It then uses that knowledge to generate new content on a set topic.
Artificial intelligence tools have become remarkably clever in their ability to mimic and understand language—even slang. Headlines, emails, ads, meta tags, even product descriptions—the possibilities are endless. You simply add your parameters and let the machine do the rest. Talk about time-saving not having to tackle content word by word, right?
Chris Frantz, Vice President of Snazzy.AI—an AI copywriting tool part of the Unbounce family—explains:
Much of a marketer’s job is writing. Sometimes, writer’s block occurs, making it difficult to come up with the next sentence or an additional revision. That’s where AI copywriting comes in. It supplements your writing stack and process with a third-party smart assistant, and can help bolster your existing copywriting skills and fill in the blanks where you might get stuck otherwise. — Chris Frantz, VP, Snazzy.AI
Understanding the basics of AI
Artificial intelligence can become very complicated very quickly, which is why there are often misconceptions about it—ugh, thanks for that, Skynet. So let’s break it down in simple terms: What do we really mean when we say “AI”?
In one corner, we have Artificial General Intelligence. This is what most people think of when someone says AI. Y’ know, the story of the robot who learns to love? This is something we only might see sometime within our lifetime. Even then, probably not an advanced version of it.
In the other corner, we have Artificial Narrow Intelligence—ANI. This is the AI marketers have at their disposal today. ANI focuses on narrow problem-solving applications, performing one type of task or function, typically better and more efficiently than a human ever could.
We’re talking chatbots able to understand subtle nuances of human speech, personalized digital experiences, and enhanced PPC campaigns thanks to automated smart bidding. AI-generated copy is but one of these exciting solutions.
We’re at the beginning of a bold new era of marketing—with AI making your life as a marketer easier and your campaigns more effective in the years to come.
Did you know Unbounce pioneered a new marketing approach called conversion intelligence? We believe the best—and most efficient—way to get more conversions lies in combining the data-crunching power of artificial intelligence and the creativity and experience of marketers. It’s you, your know-how, augmented by machines.Here’s what that future looks like.
2. Will AI Replace Copywriters?
No. AI will not replace copywriters. But it will change how they do their jobs. Just because an AI content writer is carrying most of the load in creating content, it doesn’t mean that content is entirely ready for use.
Have a look at this video where a person wrote the first few lines of the script before letting AI take over the rest:
Although entertaining and impressive for sure, it’s not exactly nuanced, is it?
There are still a couple of significant limitations to AI copywriting. Machines aren’t renowned for their subtlety and human touch—and looking at the video above, from a certain point, the story just doesn’t quite make sense anymore.
It’s also important to remember that even though text created by AI isn’t copied from anywhere on the web, it’s also not quite original. The content is generated based on copy patterns already out there and published—so in a sense, you’re creating a copy of a copy of a copy.
A machine pretending to be human? Yep, I’m going ahead and say AI isn’t going to kill copywriting just yet.
This isn’t really an issue for meta tags and product descriptions since you’re mostly talking to bots anyway, but you’ll always want an actual human to go in and add some creative flair for anything a bit more in-depth.
When you partner with a machine to write content, it’s not about handing over a big project and never thinking about it again. You’re still going to need a human to finetune it, but you’ll be able to produce at a much faster rate than you would have on your own.
Marketers know the importance of great copy but also know the effort it takes to make copy great. In fact, we’ve found that copy plays double the role of design in predicting conversions for landing pages. AI copywriting opens up a world where you don’t have to stare at a blank page waiting for inspiration to strike. It’s about getting a head start with copy that conveys your core message, reflects your brand and tone, resonates with your audience, and drives results—in minutes, not weeks. — Yosem Reichert-Sweet, Chief Technology Officer, Unbounce
Does this mean copywriting will be automated in the future? Yes, probably. But the art of copywriting won’t ever be lost. It’ll just be adapted to something new.
Did you know that in the 2021 Conversion Benchmark Report we found that emotional language—whether positive or negative—was a key influencer in landing page success? We studied more than 44 thousand landing pages and over 33 million conversions using machine learning and found different industries and audiences had entirely contrasting preferences. As it turns out, to get that sweet ROI, tone matters. A lot. And that’s why it’s essential that a human with the know-how and expertise *partners* with AI writing tools.
3. How to Use AI Copywriting Tools
The best way to use AI copywriting tools is simply by starting to experiment with them. The possibilities are endless for what you can create, and every marketer’s needs will be different—you just need to find what works for you. To guide that journey, here are a couple of best practices to keep in mind to make sure you get the most out of your AI experience:
AI copywriting best practice #1: Set parameters and define the context
AI tools can create several variants of different content types in seconds. Product descriptions, emails, mission statements, and more. So it’s key to set specific parameters for the generator—what kind of copy you’re looking for and what information it needs to include. AI can’t actually think for itself, so without a clear idea or task, the machine will fill the blanks.
Let’s look at an example drained of context:
What’s this copy for? Who is the target audience? Is “furry hats” the product or the company? With so many questions left unanswered, here’s what we got back:
Yes, it’s endearing—buuuuuut, what are we actually going to do with this jumble?
Let’s see what happens if we give the machine just a bit more info:
Note: This isn’t an “about us” content template. It’s a content expander. With just a few pieces of info, the AI copywriter expands your ideas to create something complete—cool, right?
After giving the machine a clear what, why, and how about our fictional company, here’s what we got back:
Although this copy isn’t 100% ready to publish—you might wanna check those facts and quotes the tool added in—with a few tweaks, you’ll be well on your way to a pretty good “about us” blurb.
The rule of thumb when working with a machine—the same as it is when working with a human—is a clear brief. After all, if you ask stupid questions, you’re going to get stupid answers. If you’re still not happy with your results, just tweak your parameters—your new copy is just a click away!
Different tools each have their own measures to set content parameters. Within Unbounce’s Snazzy.AI content creation platform, you can create a company profile and define your audience, branded keywords, and a general company description for super-fast content creation without retraining the tool every time. Within the tool, you can even customize different content templates for tone and length. It’s all about creating content in minutes, not weeks.
AI copywriting best practice #2: Spice it up
AI is amazing. It has incredible data-crunching power and can understand and make sense of content in a way that’s beyond impressive for a machine. But it’s neither creative nor original.
For certain types of content, this isn’t too much of an issue—let’s be honest, meta tags aren’t really created to inspire. But for content that carries brand weight like a value proposition, or something that requires engagement like an email, you’re going to want to take the AI-generated content as a starting point and add in subtle persuasive tactics yourself.
Have a look at this example of a sales outreach email created by AI:
It does the job, sure. But it really does the bare minimum. Would you respond to an email that *looks* like it was sent by a heartless bot? Probably not.
That doesn’t mean you need to pour hours into writing and rewriting, though. Most of the work has been done. It just needs a bit of zhushing up. Add in a clear campaign goal, some personality, and brand flavor, maybe also a few fun graphics and a striking subject line, and—BOOM!—you’ll be serving up a great mailer.
(P.S. Copy is only one part of the email experience. Get inspired for your next outreach campaign with thisemail marketing guide.)
AI copywriting best practice #3: Personalization is key
“Buy now”
“Click here”
“Sign up”
“Learn more”
These are the CTAs we all know and love. They’re simple, to the point, and littered across most web pages. When it comes to effective, high-converting CTAs, though, you don’t really wanna go that way. Personalized CTAs have been found to perform 202% better than basic prompts.
The thing is, though, AI copywriters are most likely going to recommend generic CTAs—remember how AI copy is created based on what’s already published? Yep, see for yourself what happened when we asked an AI copywriter to create a landing page for a new product release …
CTAs aside, how awesome is it to see a complete landing page written and conceptualized in a few clicks? But at the end of the day, it’s estimated that people only read 28% of content on a webpage, at most. So it’s critical that the most important part of your campaign—your CTA—pops. Even if your AI-powered writer gets a bit more exciting when it comes to CTAs, you don’t really want to take risks here.
AI copywriting best practice #4: Get some headline help
Did you know that traffic can vary as much as 500% based on your headline? Yup, this one’s a biggie. Just like CTAs, headlines are a crucial factor in determining whether or not your content will be successful or not.
Writing attention-grabbing headlines is an art. Although you probably won’t publish just any recommendation from AI, it’s a great resource to get ideas for your headline if you have no idea where to go.
These are suggestions from our trusty AI writer for a Facebook ad headline. You can also generate options for blogs, landing pages—heck, even email subject lines.
From here, you might wanna check the search results for these recommendations and see what pops up. How can you tailor your headline so that it stands out from the crowd? What problem is your content solving, and how can the headline address it head-on?
The good news is that once you’re committed and happy with your headline—or multiple variants if you’re testing ’em out—you’ll be able to give the AI copywriter a clear direction where to go for the body copy. Remember, giving the machine context will make the whole process go much faster and give you much better results—talk about a win-win!
(Psssssst … Do you really *hate* writing headlines? With the Unbounce Smart Builder, get custom AI-generated headline suggestions powered by conversion data to get you the best possible results—headline optimization, just like that!)
AI copywriting best practice #5: Bulk up with research
Bots are fantastic for menial work, but they’re not the greatest of strategic thinkers. And for that, there’s no replacement for good ole fashioned research. What makes your audience tick? What are industry-wide best practices in terms of language? Should you write an essay or keep things short and sweet?
Competitive intelligence can give you these insights to help discover the secrets of a good conversion rate for your campaign. This knowledge then empowers you to optimize your machine-generated content. A good idea is to follow the conversion intelligence model to kickstart the process. It’s broken down into three simple steps:
Learn: AI-derived insights can help inform how your audience will respond to your campaign. It can be something as simple as knowing that the sweet spot for SaaS landing pages regarding word count is no more than 300 words, to more intricate insights like the effects of language sentiment in different industries. Resources like the Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report are a great way to learn more about what works for different industries.
Build: This is the fun part—bringing those insights into practice. When working with an AI copywriter, it’s about creating custom parameters in the tool, such as copy length or voice and tone. Remember, for anything nuanced like emotional sentiment, bring in a human to make sure you get it spot-on.
Optimize: The goal is to become bigger and better, right? Optimize your AI writing process, learn and test what works, then rinse and repeat the process to see your conversion rates grow.
AI copywriting best practice #6: Edit, edit, edit
Poor spelling and grammar scare 59% of website visitors away—yes, really. Regardless of how much you trust your AI-powered copywriter, you’re gonna want to double-check your content before publishing.
This is also essentially how AI will be *changing* the role of the traditional copywriter—note the emphasis on change, not replace. It will mean moving away from sole creator to becoming a strategic editor, having a machine do the menial work while a human becomes the warden of spelling and grammar, voice and tone, and high-level strategic planning.
Because of AI, we’re starting to trade our responsibility for mundane tasks for more strategic, directorial duties. In a way, it means we have to stop thinking of our tools as tools and start thinking of them as employees that we trust to do their jobs. — Daniel Parscale, Unbounce customer and former Digital Marketing Strategist, CD Baby
After all, your time is far too valuable to sweat about writer’s block.
Got an AI copywriter but still no idea where to start? Page goal! Voice and tone! Call to action! Get acquainted with the basics of great content and make each word count with the Unbounce guide to landing page copywriting.
4. What is the Best AI Copywriter?
The best AI content writer is the one you work best with. There are many tools out in the wild that you can try, each with a different strength or focus. The more you experiment with AI copywriting tools, the more you’ll know what you need in each service.
That said, all the examples used in this article came from Unbounce’s Snazzy.AI platform. What makes this tool stand out is that there are over 30 templates you can use to create content with AI—from fully-fledged landing pages, to Amazon listings and taglines. You can even have artificial intelligence create TikTok video ideas for you!
Brainstorming? Yet another thing you don’t have to worry about.
Welcoming AI to Your Marketing Team
Artificial intelligence is steadily becoming a more and more important part of the marketing team. It’s a time saver. It’s data-backed and—most importantly—it’s key to being competitive in the digital world.
“But, but … AI will kill copywriting!” No, it won’t. It also won’t eliminate data analysts, marketing strategists, or campaign managers. We believe the future of marketing lies in conversion intelligence—an AI-augmented approach that sees the raw power of AI partnered with the know-how and creativity of marketers.
I think AI tools will end up supplementing existing creators instead of replacing them. If you look at the history of technology, tools augment what artists are doing. There’s no way to have a symphony without instruments, but the addition of instruments is fundamentally different than replacing an orchestra with an iPod. — Chris Frantz, VP, Snazzy.AI
We’re looking at a future of more conversions and fewer hassles. And AI copywriting is just the start of it all.
Platform expands the company’s offerings beyond landing pages to meet the needs of SMBs aiming to level up their growth.
:)
Email messages
Social media display ads
Website banners (even if the website you’re browsing has nothing to do with that brand specifically)
.)
Clicking
Filling out a form
Purchasing a product
Signing up for a newsletter
